I Disappear
by Vega62a
Summary: Years after graduation, Kenji Harima has become a relatively successful manga artist. He doesn't really like to think about his days in 2c, and the dissapointment after graduation. Soon, though, he'll have plenty more to think about. Chapter 5 now up!
1. 1: In Memory

Author's notes:

Firstly, I'd like to note that writing a fic about a series that hasn't yet finished is always dangerous—if you're not delicate, you're liable to see what you thought was your firm grasp of canon become just so much piss into the wind. If such happens to me, I'll do my scouts-honor best to remedy the situation, but at best it may turn into an AU and at worst, I may have to call it off. I don't see that happening though.

Saying a few words about the tone of this fic, it will _not _be like the series. Slapstick humor does not translate to the page, at all, no matter what people tell you. That doesn't mean I don't hope that in reading this, you'll get, as Richard "Trashmouth" Tozier might have said, your chucks, but they won't be as many or varied as in School Rumble, because this fiction isn't about School Rumble, not really; it's about Harima Kenji, and Yakumo and Tenma Tsukamoto, and all of the other characters that I love so dearly. Maybe it's about giving them a happy ending, maybe not. We'll have to see. Besides, anybody who knows how I write knows I'm best when it's long and angsty, as one reviewer put it. That reviewer was right, too. This fic will be long and probably very dark, though hopefully not without its light, too.

I don't align myself with any of the pairing "factions," so don't hold me to a pairing. I'm not even sure if there'll _be _a pairing, though, realistically, somebody's going to wind up boning (er, "dating") somebody by the end.

I'm going to divide each chapter into parts where I can—I've noticed that it's easier to read three short chapters than one long one, since you can just read a part of it if you're in a hurry.

Alright. So, this being lengthy enough already, I guess it's about time to start the show. Onward and upward, as they say. Or maybe we wont go upward, just onward. In any case.

Reviews are always appreciated! Concrit especially—I _survive _on concrit, though I'll probably keep writing this even if nobody reads it at all, which, honestly, is what I expect.

Thanks for reading!

(NO PROLOGUE THIS TIME! HAH)

* * *

I Disappear  
A tale of getting back what was never really lost.  
By Veg

* * *

Chapter one  
In Memory

* * *

_I can't live in the past and drown myself in memory_

* * *

_I want to go back to the way things were. To those happier days. "Those days" are always happier. I just want it to be like it was; that's all. Was it too much to ask that those carefree days last forever? _

Harima Kenji didn't often think about his high school days since he'd sobered up—his sponsor had called it a "trigger," and told him it was probably best not to dwell on it. Chances were he was right, too; Harima always wound up thinking about it when he drank, and always wound up drinking when he thought on it too deeply.

That was _before _he'd sobered up, of course.

Not that anybody really, truly sobered up; everybody at those meetings knew that. What they were really doing was taking the chimp that hung around on their shoulders all day and stuffing it in a suitcase. They could make the cases strong—good material, tough locks, that sort of thing—but it was just a suitcase all the same. A little black bag you handcuffed to yourself and carried around with you. The kind of thing that you sometimes, in your weaker moments,_ desperately _wanted to open out of sheer curiosity. _I can do it this time. I'm cured, so one can't hurt, right?_

Trouble with chimps was, if you let them out for even a second, most of the time they just hopped right back on top of you. And the trouble with locked suitcases was that they all had a combination, and Kenji's sponsor had (probably correctly) deduced that his was high school.

That wasn't his_ only _"trigger," of course. He'd had a tough life. Parents gone god knew where at a young age, living with a neglectful cousin for a while, hopping in and out of poverty and squalor during the early years of his career and all the pain that brought; all of these were "triggers" too, but none had been quite so powerfully intense as the things he wanted to forget in high school.

Thing about high school was, and this was a common theme in "Hario Harima's" work, that people tended not to notice just how fast it went, nor how much they inevitably left undone when it was over. It was only three years, after all, and when it was over, it hit him like a hammer: That was it. _It._ School was out, over for good. He had _zero _University prospects, and neither did that one thing that got him out of bed every day, that one thing that had kept him in school and away from trouble: Tenma.

He had always thought, _someday, someday I'll make it, and then, that'll be it, I can be really, really happy. _Whenever he failed, there was always another chance at _someday, _and then all of the sudden, out of the blue, it was graduation, and that was it. He had spent it in shock. That _couldn't _have been it. Someday _had _to come.

It never did.

Mai Ootsuka gave a speech. She had been the valedictorian. Something about dreams never ending, or some such insubstantial crap, and then she had walked off the stage, and eventually, just before the middle of the alphabet, Kenji had walked onto it and off of it.

And then it had ended. He saw Tenma several times after that, but it was somehow…different. They were in groups, and soon after that, there were no more groups—Mikoto, Eri, and Akira all went off to university, and Karasuma went to America to promote his manga. He saw Yakumo—_imouto-san_, he had called her—less and less as his department assigned him to a professional editor and Yakumo refused formal training, and the less he saw Yakumo, the less he saw Tenma.

And then Tenma had gotten her job as a ski instructor, with Yakumo off to university _(for what? Something to do with animals, I think; she said something about that the last time I saw her) _like the rest of them, and then _she _had moved, too.

And then it had just been Harima. He was sure the girls saw each other sometimes, but now, all these years—seven, by his counting, which was never entirely reliable—later, it was probably less for fun and games and more for dinner with their husbands.

He had no idea what had come of them. Any of them. With the death of his dream had come the death of his drive; had Tenma proposed to move during high school, he might have moved with her. Maybe now, all these years later, with a recovered heart and (mostly) an empty shoulder, he may have as well, but now it was too late. He didn't know what had become of any of them.

But it was old news. He had found a few new friends, though none he liked very well, and he had dated a few girls, one a fan of his work. Mostly he worked. It was what he was good at; why not do it with everything he had? No heartbreak lasted forever, even that heartwrenching, seemingly unending agony dished out so constantly by an unrequited love.

But even with that, remembering was a little hard. Remembering all the time he'd spent, and how little he'd taken out of it in the end. (Tenma might have said that he was being stupid, that he should remember how much fun he had, and he might have even agreed, long ago). And remembering made him want the bottle, so he didn't remember, because the last place he wanted to wind up again was at the bottom of a bottle.

Really, it wasn't all that uncommon for writers (or, by extension, manga artists) to end up somewhere around there. A lot of writers had plenty of their own problems, and a lot more simply felt that what they wrote with a little bit of _o-sake _in them was just that much better, and then _a little bit _of _o-sake _wasn't quite enough to get the level of quality they needed, and soon enough they wouldn't even sit down at their desk until half-past shitfaced o'clock.

But Kenji had been there and done that, and he was done with it, and glad to be.

But even so, sometimes he wanted to be back. It was the chimp, that fucking chimp inside the briefcase, really.

But locks didn't magically break themselves. He knew that well enough; that was really how he managed to keep a lid on that chimp so well. He just didn't tempt fate. If he was starting to drift, thinking about high school or how miserable he'd been during the years afterwards, he just went out. That was really what those friends were for, anyway—he knew them all from his meetings, so they were safe, and being a decently-established author, he was allowed a little bit of leeway on his deadlines. Mostly, so long as he had his serialization in every week, he was in the clear, and, unbeknownst to his editor (it was, in fact, a closely-guarded secret), he actually had several weeks worth of material in a drawer somewhere. His current work, _Heaven's seven, _was fairly popular anyway, so it was allowed a few weeks worth of filler if need be.


	2. In Memory, part two

Picking up his cell phone, Kenji crossed the ten meters from his apartment's workroom to his bathroom, by way of his bedroom, and flipped it open. He didn't have anybody on speed-dial, but he had an extensive address-book, which he began to scroll through, browsing past his multitude of work-related contacts until he found one in particular—his editor, a good man by the name of Yoshida. As he stepped in front of the mirror, he clicked, _send, _and held the phone up to his ear, at the same time studying his reflection a bit.

As a rule, Kenji didn't pay much attention to the way he looked; if he was clean and well-groomed, that was usually good enough for him. The one thing that hadn't really changed since his high-school days was his mode of dress—a button-up shirt and slacks was really about as formal as it went for him. He was currently in a bit of disarray—he hadn't slept the previous evening, as was occasionally the case, and his hair was disheveled enough, his eyes red enough to prove it.

In spite of all this, the years he'd had thus far, none easy ones by anybody's standards, had been relatively kind to Kenji Harima's face and body—not only a little indebted to his constant practice of the martial art he had affectionately dubbed_ harijutsu. _The gut he'd acquired—on his tall, lanky form, it gave him the appearance of being pregnant—from the booze had faded, and his skin had tightened again; there were no laugh-lines about his face, but nor were there wrinkles from the many, many nights of stress and no sleep.

And really, there were no two ways about it: Kenji Harima was a handsome man. Clean-shaven as he was now, or with the beard from whence sprang Princess's _(no thinking about that trigger) _nickname for him, he was good-looking: his jawline was pronounced, his eyes almond-shaped and cool, his stature tall and his body lean and well-toned. Were he less standoffish, he would have probably been extremely well-liked, but he could never quite overcome that feeling of _I-don't-belong-here _at all the publication's parties. It came from his childhood, he supposed. He also supposed—

"'lo." His editor's voice filled half of his head, and Kenji's face instantly creased with concern—the man, usually quiet but never _this _tough to hear, sounded awful. His voice was ragged, barely above a whisper, as though he'd been screaming all night, and there was something _off _about the way he'd uttered even that one syllable, as though he'd suddenly acquired some vague accent.

"Yoshida?" Kenji said, his voice thick with concern. "Are you…are you okay?"

"That's a really good question," Yoshida said, his voice even thicker with…with Kenji didn't know what. "I'm not really sure."

"What's going on, man?" Kenji had never quite lost that part of his speech, that _informality _to it. That and his scars were his only reminders that he had, once, nearly flunked out of high school as a delinquent. _Do I need to be calling the police? I'm not very…_

"I'm not sure myself," Yoshida said. Something shrilled in the background at that point, and Yoshida took a moment to shout something back, something incoherent that had something to do with some kind of _fucking noise. _"What I do know is that my wife thinks I've had…" there was a pause, and a dull smacking sound—maybe somebody wetting his lips, or just smacking the phone, "too much to drink."

Kenji froze. "Yoshida, you should lay off." _How did they say it to me? _"That stuff is no good in the end, you know, it's just—"

"Don't you fucking spout that AA," his words slurred and it came out something like _eh heh,_ a twisted, drunken laugh,"BULLSHIT at me, Harima," Yoshida snapped. "You pathetic _sod, _you have _no. Idea. _What it is to live _badly, _nor what it is like to have such a—"

Another shriek. Yoshida shrieked back this time, and Harima understood every word: "WOULD YOU, FOR ONCE IN YOUR PATHETIC, CONNIVING LIFE, JUST SHUT THE _FUCK _UP AND LET ME HAVE A DECENT CONVERSATION WITH MY FRIEND?" he screamed. "Thank you."

A moment of tense silence, Harima not quite sure what to say, verily stunned. "Yoshida, man, I think you should really…I think you should lay down or something."

"I _am _laying down, Harima, my friend. And you know? I think I'll stay that way."

Kenji had never been a clever boy, nor a sharp boy, and sharp and clever men did not grow out of slow or dense boys. However, alarm bells started lighting up all over the place at this last. Trouble was trouble, no matter what you did for a living, and this was trouble.

As though sensing danger to his plan, however, before Kenji could say anything, the line went dead. No _goodbye, _or _good luck on your work, _or _enjoy yourself, I'll be here cleaning up this wreck you call Japanese._

Just silence.

Kenji didn't call back. He called the police.

They didn't arrive in time to save Yoshida's television, which had been cranked up to its highest volume so that it could scream at him properly, and then promptly muted when he screamed back. Nor did they arrive in time to prevent his wife from throwing him out of the house; when they showed up, he was sitting on the front step of his apartment complex, his head in his hands, snoring gently. He spent three hours in detox, and his wife bought a new TV. She wouldn't let him back in the apartment for another three days, but when she did, they would make tender, gentle love and he would remember what it was that he loved about her for the first time in years.

Kenji didn't go out that night. He slept, but only out of sheer exhaustion, and he woke feeling about as bad as he ever had—in a moment of what could only be described as sheer, bone-freezing panic, he wondered if he had dropped off of the wagon the night before. It took several minutes of steady breathing and recalling the events of the night before to convince him otherwise—it had been _Yoshida _who had fallen off of the wagon, if he had ever had a wagon to begin with.

His cell phone rang about twenty minutes into his workout, which was about ten minutes after his workout ended; he didn't feel anywhere near well enough to attempt something stupid like exercise that day. He answered it, and, while_ he _thought he put on a pretty decent show of being coherent, the first words out of his agent's mouth were, "Harima, are you all right? You sound like horseshit after a week in the sun." His agent, an unobtrusively tall, pudgy man named named Mamoru, had a certain _flair _for hyperbolae.

"Fine," Kenji said, refusing to elaborate.

"Are you sure?" The man's tone was concerned, but it was the sort of concern that Kenji knew damn well from his—half for the man, maybe, but half for his pocketbook as well—Kenji wasn't his only client, but he was certainly his most successful, and therefore he was the largest part of his paycheck. "Should I be—"

"_Fine,_" Kenji repeated. "Completely fine."

Silence, breathy and tense for a moment. Mamoru was considering whether or not to take him at face value—of course he was. If Kenji was lying and he _had _dropped off of the wagon (Mamoru's biggest fear from Kenji) then the longer he waited to check him back into rehab, the worse it could be, and the longer it might be until that paycheck. He didn't know about the stacks of pages hiding under Kenji's desk any more than Yoshida had—if Kenji had kept an assistant, he might have, but Kenji refused any assistants; as a professional _mangaka_, he claimed, the only thing he really had to do was draw, so he might as well do it all himself. If he needed poses done, which he still did, on occasion…well, that was what Yoshida was for, and when he worked in the office, the man was only a stone's throw away. He really had liked the quiet, sharp man; he felt a sharp pang of fear at the thought.

_(That's what you tell yourself it is; in reality, you've just never found an assistant like)_

"Alright," Mamoru said at last. "If that's how it is, then I don't feel bad about talking to you about this. You might want to sit down, though."

Harima did, his breath catching in his throat, and Mamoru told him about Yoshida.

"I already knew that," _you shit, _"do you know if he's alright?"

"The police picked him up after he butchered his television with what his wife called _a fucking battleaxe, officers, a fucking battleaxe,_" Mamoru said, raising his voice into an irritating whine in a pale attempt at imitating Yoshida's wife, a pretty, opinionated woman who Kenji had actually liked quite a bit. Mamoru gave a chuckle, and Kenji sat in stony silence until he had quenched himself on thoughts of beating the fat bastard to a pulp and Mamoru resumed his tale with all of the awkwardness that a crash-and-burn joke brought. "He went to detox for a while, and he's more or less done puking now, but…"

Kenji's heart didn't really have time to unclench; _okay _and _but _were too close in that sentence. "But what?" he asked hurriedly.

"But he quit."

Somebody dropped a thirty-ton weight down Kenji's throat, and it forced all of his insides down, and out through his bare feet.

"Told me to tell you that he was sorry for what he said to you last night, and that he was done editing. Said something about writing a novel, teaching a class, something like that."

To Kenji, _something like that_ seemed like a curse. Deliberate disrespect; he hadn't paid attention to probably the last words Yoshida would ever say to Kenji. _You bastard. _

"So the department is assigning you a new editor, as well as an assistant."

"I don't need an assistant," Harima said. It felt like the billionth time he'd said it, and maybe it was, but he hadn't needed to repeat it for at least two years.

"They're the same person, Harima," Mamoru said. "The department's been pretty impressed with your sales thus far. _Heaven's seven _is probably their best-selling series right now, although the fans say they'd like to see a little bit more of Sei and—"

"The department's assigning me a personal editor?" In spite of his pain over Yoshida's departure, Harima couldn't help but groan a little: People who got personal editors were expected to crank out more pages.

Yoshida nodded. "If you want an assistant, you've got one, and I'd recommend making use of the opportunity. The department wants—"

"More pages. Right."

"More pages." Harima silently counted just about how many pages he had stashed, and wondered how quickly those reserves would deplete. "So if you could just come in today and—"

"The department already hired a new editor?" Kenji silently wondered if Mamoru was going to start getting pissed about being cut off all the time. Of course, if he'd cared about what Mamoru thought, he probably wouldn't cut him off so often.

"Theyhave a pretty long list of applicants. It wasn't hard to find somebody new."

"Someone with _experience?_" Not that Kenji could really complain if they didn't have much experience. Kenji didn't have much himself. Somebody who had been writing for seven years may as well have been in diapers.

"No clue. I have no idea who they wound up hiring. They basically just went back through their list of candidates they'd interviewed, pulled up the one with the highest score, and called him or her back and asked if they still wanted the job. That's the thing about this business, Harima, is you can't go for even a day without—"

"Activity, I know, I know. So," an idea piqued into his head, one he hadn't had in a long time. "What you're telling me," he said, trying to sound as positively threatening as he could, "is that I have to get up off of this wonderful, comfortable chair, where I am in what the Buddhists might call Nirvana, primarily composed of light, comfortable pillows, haul my ass down through Tokyo rush hour traffic and over to our Dark Tower of a corporate office, just so I can meet some editor that I might ask to be let go within a week? Are you really inconveniencing me like that? Are you really telling me that I have to put myself through that kind of hell, today of all days, after I've just lost a dear friend and all I think I'll be capable of is sitting around or maybe kicking the hell out of somebody?"

"Yes." Mamoru said it as though he hadn't heard Kenji's tone at all. Maybe he hadn't, or maybe Kenji had just lost his touch. Or maybe Mamoru just wasn't frightened of anything the man could do to him—they were, after all, separated by a phone cord and about twenty miles. Or maybe two hundred miles. Kenji had no idea where his agent was right now, nor did he care. "Why? Is that a problem?"

Kenji grimaced in defeat. "No. I'll be in."

He could almost hear it in Mamoru's voice: _There's a good boy. _ "Wonderful. I'll call and let them know you're coming in." Mostly, Kenji worked from home on his rough sketches, so he wasn't always in.

"Fine," Kenji said again.

They hung up shortly thereafter, and a half hour later, Harima had grudgingly dressed and cleaned himself, and had some coffee and rice. It made him feel a bit more awake, and by the time he was out his door, he wasn't moving quite so sluggishly.

The motorcycle ride over even made him feel pretty good. It usually did.

* * *

Thanks for reading, as always! Look for the next chapter sometime later this week, I hope. And hey, if you liked it, or even if you didn't, think about dropping me a review! Mmm, reviews. Food for writers. 

You DO want me to eat, don't you?


	3. 2: Travelin' Band

Author's notes

Well, Nigakki 26 still isn't out yet, and this is, which means that there's still a shot that all of this was for naught. As you'll learn soon, I'm sure, in my version of events, Harima and Yakumo do not get together at the end of the series. (Because honestly, from my viewpoint, it seems as though they will in the end of Nigakki). In fact, Harima gets nobody at the end of the series. I suppose, then, that if 26 is released and, holy shit on toast, Harima's got hisself a lovely lady lump, this is officially an AU. Or based on the manga. Either way, enjoy the ride.

Also, I claim no credit for the literary jargon joke. I stole that from Stephen King; I've actually referenced him in several places already, including in the author's notes. Points if you spot them, but if you can't, never fear, there will be many more—maybe this seems a little like imitation, and whether it is or not isn't up to me to say. But in either case, I'm having a good time. Are you?

LANGUAGE NOTES

"Please take care of me" can be equated to, if you're "down" on your Japanese, _yoroshiku onegaishimasu, _which is a traditional phrase at the end of an introduction. It's a literal translation that doesn't add much without a note like this.

Finally, I've found that I can't help but keep _imouto-san _in its original language. Again, for those of you not down with your Japanese, _imouto _is a little sister, and _imouto-san _is _somebody else's _little sister—it's typically just an easy nickname, and it's one that Harima applied to Yakumo.All non-English words _will _be in italics, so please don't mistake it for emphasis.

* * *

_737 comin' out of the sky / won't you take me down to Memphis on a midnight ride?_

_I wan' move_

* * *

Chapter two

Travelin' Band

It occurred to Karen Ichijou for the first time midway through their flight from John F. Kennedy International that when 747 touched down at Narita Airport in Tokyo, she would be officially out of a job for the first time in six years, and furthermore, that she had no idea what she was going to do with herself.

It wasn't the money. Money was no issue; her musical quartet,_ Traveling Band, _had made its rounds around the planet not once but twice, and as a rule, anybody who pulled more than one world-tour run didn't have to worry about money for at least thirty comfortable years; more if they were content with an apartment and a Toyota, and more yet if they weren't camera-shy. Photo-ops weren't awfully lucrative, but they weren't free, either. She knew this, but the trouble with that was that Karen Ichijou _was _camera-shy. More than that, she was just _shy. _Her agent told her that was part of her allure, especially in America, where otaku the country over would flock to see her sing the theme song from Harima Hario's _Days Lost, Memories Found. _She supposed it was also part of her allure in Japan, but for different reasons.

Reasons that would probably make her blush if she thought too heavily on them, so she didn't. She was, after all, a shy girl. Strong, yes, and beautiful too now, as she grew and filled out more as her mother had, but still shy. Some girls were born that way, and some stayed that way, too.

People used to tell Karen that shy girls always got the best guys, because the only thing that could pierce her detached exterior was true kindness. Karen knew this directly to be untrue; in practice, it was the worst men, the social butterflies so adept at charming women that it was like a second (or perhaps first, and their day job was second) career to them. That was certainly what happened to Karen, and not just once—over and over again. First Imadori, who unwittingly drew her out with simple teasing and playfulness, but nothing ever came of that, and perhaps that was for the best. Then Uemura, with his faux-demure exterior that made playful, satisfying nights give way to empty, painful days. Last, but certainly not least, (considering her newfound employment status) was Miyamoto. _Traveling Band's _drummer since the beginning. Karen's love for equally as long, even through Uemura. Karen's lover as of three nights ago, and an empty spot on the bed as of yesterday.

Maybe it was his easy smile, his blunt speech that brought her out of herself, that had enraptured her. Maybe it was his small, beautiful eyes that had made her think for a moment that he was anything other than what he was—a womanizer.

Perhaps she had just gone out of her mind for a night.

It didn't matter, in any case. It had been awkward for her, getting on the plane, but they all had their separate cabins now, and, frankly, Useugi and Shingen had agreed that it was time for them to move on. They didn't look at Karen with any kind of animosity, and she was certain that Miyamoto still wasn't sure what precisely was going on.

It was only awkward for her.

It was only ever awkward for her.

Maybe that was why it was so much harder.

* * *

Yakumo Tsukamoto was greeted twice as an old, anonymous colleague might have been; the kind of person you said hello to every day in the office, but never really got to know. The kind of person that could have been anybody; a nice guy, a workaholic, an alcoholic with two kids in Kyoto and a wife in Yokohama; or a serial murderer—it didn't matter, really, so long as you didn't look them in the eye for too long, or smile too big. The kind of person you just greeted every day and moved on. She had never been accused of having an _everyone _face, but then again, she thought a little ironically, most salarymen had never been accused of having an eye for detail.

The odd thing about it was, this was only the third time she had been to Shakodan Publications. The first had been for her interview, about two years back, and the second had been half a year later, during the brief period she was out of work.

And now, here she was, out of work again, and in Shakodan's lobby again. Did that make this a last-ditch publication? Plenty of people back at Jump might have said that it did; that if _Harima Hario, _a sentimentalist who was already halfway down Hack Road less than a decade into his career,was the best they could come up with, then it was _worse _than a last-ditch: It was a last-ditch that outsold them by publishing a bunch of hacks.

Yakumo hadn't really been in the business for very long, but she got the feeling that maybe _hack _was a kind of slang, another word for _successful _or _well-read _in the literary jargon of the day.

She hadn't left Jump for any particular reason, really. It wasn't something she consciously thought about beforehand; she had no problems working there—no indecent looks, no ass-grabbing, no conspicuous attempts to corner her in a supply closet to get some "brushes"—really, it had just been an intuition. The kind of thing she might have attributed, many years ago and still a child, to the telepathy that had kept her out of any kind of meaningful relationship with a man. The intuition had said, _okay, time to get while the getting's good, catch your ride to the end of the highway and move up in the world, _and she had. It had served her well thus far, and really, it had gotten her her job at Jump, so it seemed almost fitting that it be the thing that take her away from it.

And really, what would be would be, regardless of if she followed her intuition or not. It ran its course, and standing against it earned you what standing against the flow of a powerful river earned you: A spot on the riverbed, in the same damn place downstream that you wound up if you were rafting instead of being stubborn.

And apparently, _downstream _was Shokodan, as an editor. Not a veterinarian—although, again, to hear the folks at Jump tell it, what the artists there really _needed _was a vet—but an editor. Whether what she'd told Harima before she left was a lie or not was, maybe, down to the day you asked her.

And, in fairness, she _did _have a year's worth of pre-veterinary-track courses, but she also had three years worth of Japanese-track courses and a big placard on her wall, informing people that she was a Batchelor of the Japanese Language.


	4. Travelin' Band, part two

"Yakumo Tsukamoto?" came a big, friendly voice from just inside the door to the office whose waiting bench she was seated on. "You can come in now. It's safe."

She smiled a little at that—not at the poor attempt at humor, but rather at the man's voice. It was deep and powerful, and reminded her a little of the Chief Editor at her first place of employ, with Harima—a veritable giant of a man, by anybody's standards, but a good man nonetheless—if you ignored how downright frightening he could be. (She had never really given up her suspicion that the Chief Editor's primary function was to scare the pages out of any artist who claimed to come up short).

She stood, folding her hands underneath her legs in an almost automatic motion that she had never really lost, and then straightened with them clasped in front of her tightly; it was something to do with her hands, yes, but it was more than that; it was something to do with her head. She felt herself wringing her hands just a little as she entered—already slick with a sweat wrought from nerves—and forced herself to stop. Another thing to do with her head.

The Chief Editor's office was a fairly dismal place, which only reinforced her suspicion that maybe those who filled the task were a little off-human; poorly-lit and cluttered, it bore all the adornment of a bachelor's hovel, despite the fact that the Chief Editor made more than twice what she would make. The only thing even remotely humanizing about the place was that most of the clutter was manga—rough sketches, submissions, and near-final products, spread around his desk, on the floor, on two of the three simple wooden chairs in front of his desk, all pockmarked with post-it notes bearing scrawled memos. She kept her hands clasped to prevent herself from reaching out to touch them—whether to straighten them or just …touch them, she didn't know—and bowed as soon as she was in the door.

"Reporting for my first day of work, sir," she said gratefully—and she _was _grateful—"please take care of me." Straightening up, she met his eye—he was a fairly small man, actually, no less than fifty years old, with a weathered, friendly face, and he smiled at her, rubbing his back with his left hand.

A moment of silence, and then he laughed until he could catch himself. She kept herself from frowning by clutching at the hem of her blouse—a fresh bout of nerves washed over her when he laughed, maybe because his laugh was too genuine, or maybe just because that was what you did when demons laughed, even old, friendly demons: You got nervous.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, straightening his face. "You're just...not quite what I expected." Well, at least there was _one _person who didn't pretend to remember her face—she was quite sure, after a moment of studying his face, that she'd seen him at her first interview.

"I'm…sorry?" she said, not relieved.

"You're very young," he said. "You'll find that most of our editors here are a little older, and a little less…polite." It was true—she'd heard somewhere that most copy editors were in their thirties, at _least_, coming out of a writing career, or an attempt at such. It wasn't awfully unusual to see one fresh out of university, but it wasn't unlikely that such a man might be surprised by one, either. "The demons over at Human Resources told me they were sending me their most qualified candidate still on the market, so I expected somebody with a few more years and a few less teeth…I guess that was my mistake, eh?" he laughed again, and this time, Yakumo couldn't help but smile with him. She found herself liking the man's friendly, open demeanor immediately, and she could even start to see the horns retract a little. (Though she still thought a little that calling the Human Resources people _demons _was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black).

"Yes sir," she said. "But…"

"But you _do _have experience, I know. Over at Jump, wasn't it?"

"Yes sir."

"Mmm," he said. "Well, in any event, you'll be working differently over here than you were over there—you were a blanket editor for two or three smaller serials over there, if what they told me is right."

She nodded, and her hands clutched a little tighter. This was the part she was afraid of.

No, "afraid" wasn't the right word. She didn't fear this. Her stomach didn't tighten in fear.

It tightened in anticipation. She was choosing her seat in her first university class for the first time all over again, wondering if anybody was going to sit next to her  
_(any _boys)  
or if they would all sort of … keep their distance.

"You'll be working under a single artist here, and an experienced one, at that. You'll be serving as both his assistant and editor, which sucks, and I'm sure you haven't had to do something so crappy since you were an intern, but in fairness, I don't really think he'll put you to work as an assistant—he's always kind of spurned the idea of having one, so your function will still mostly be as an editor."

"Oh," she shook her head fervently, "I don't mind; this is the only thing I have to do, so I should do it, right?"

He paused for a moment, looking very distinctly like he was mulling something over in his head, and for that moment, there was only a mute, tense silence.

Then he burst into laughter again. She pulled back, a little unnerved. He regained himself shortly, and bowed his head a little in apology.

"I'm sorry," he said, still giving the little faux-bow. "Just…that was exactly what_ he _told me when I tried to tell him to stop sending his assistants away."

_He…_

_That doesn't mean anything. There are lots of male _manga-ka.

And yet, it did, and she knew it. That river was always moving, always sending her forward, and she could read it like a book. Not telepathy, she had lost that long ago, but she could still read it, clear as day. Clear as a river's water. But still…

She steeled her nerves. "He?"

The voice that answered her—not her, really, but him, the editor—was only a shade familiar, but it was familiar nonetheless.

"Oy," it said. "What is it, Nishido? I'm shit-beat, so please make it fast, if you don't mind plugging your ass for the day."

"Harima," said Nishido, the chief editor said, laughing as though the man hadn't flung an insult his way (and maybe he hadn't). "You have, as always, arrived just in time to avoid being punctual. This is your new editor, and, I hope, assistant, Yakumo Tsukamoto. She's only been…" he kept talking, but Yakumo stopped hearing him.

Her hands dropped to her sides, not clutching anything anymore, and she felt herself turning to face him.

She had been right.

The river _was _undeniable, after all.

* * *

Yakumo had lost the ability to see people's thoughts when she'd lost her innocence. It was her second year at university, and she had gotten to the point where the loneliness _and _the separation from her sister had become an almost unbearable combination.

But that wasn't all, of course. It never was. There was also a boy. A cute boy, and kind. She could see his thoughts, but they belied no falsity, no ill intent. He was, in fact, a complete gentleman, sweet and gentle in every way she could think of—though, she would later find out, not every way entirely.

And so, being as they were in university and Yakumo did indeed eventually allow herself to become enraptured with him, she eventually took him to her bed. They made love, and the first time it was painful, as it often was for girls, but also exceedingly gentle. She did it with her eyes closed—an intuition, perhaps—and when she opened them again, she could no longer see his thoughts, floating above his head in neat characters. For a moment, she panicked, certain that he hadn't enjoyed it, had hated it in fact, and her too. It was a panic that gripped her until the next day, when she realized that she could no longer see _anybody's _thoughts, including those of the professor who had leered at her so intently—and with so many grotesque things floating above his head—the day before.

It was actually a relief for her. There were things you _never _wanted to see, and if one were to make a list of them, other people's thoughts would top it. _Especially _your lover's, because no lover was perfect, just as no love was perfect. The sex would have been the most dangerous—men especially often had difficulty not considering their entire sexual history during each independent encounter, but Yakumo didn't know that. She suspected, of course, but in the end, she had learned the dark side of a person's thoughts the same way everybody else did: She was told.

Their relationship lasted about a year and a half, and it was good for about a year of it. All the things they did were completely, entirely new to her; the intimacy, yes, but also the …companionship. The companionship from somebody who _wanted _her; she loved her sister dearly, but she was still human, after all.

Her lover—she didn't like to think of him by name, only as _her lover—_had had one major flaw that she could see (or rather, that even her "love goggles," the sober man's equivalent to beer goggles, could not blind her to): He was fiercely opinionated, and vocal, around those with whom he was well acquainted. This was not uncommon at a university, but it was generally also not an issue with them. It _was _a surprise, the first time he began to argue with her, because he had been so gentle and soft-spoken until that point, but after a brief discussion which Yakumo wanted nothing more than to end, they came to a resolution—that he was right, namely—and it was never spoken of again.

Their one unresolved quarrel between them was that of Yakumo's sister. He thought she was overly dependant on Tenma, that she sheltered the girl too much, that the two would never be able to live (he had a very specific idea of what _living _entailed, and heaven help the man or woman who challenged it) without overcoming what he called "separation anxiety." When Tenma broke her leg during her third year at the ski resort, Yakumo left a day later than "as soon as possible." The delay was due to an argument which lasted almost two solid hours, one and a half of which were essentially her lover berating her for wanting to abandon her schoolwork and rush to her sister's side.

That was the only time Yakumo could remember raising her voice in anger to another person. She told him that she would do _anything _for the girl who "sheltered" her and had kept her from going insane and breaking down after their parents left, and that he was an insensitive fuck—also the only time she could recall swearing in anger—for not understanding that. She told him that she was going, and if he said another word to her before she returned, it would be the last he ever spoke to her.

Maybe he thought she was bluffing, or maybe he was just too stupid or stubborn to think about the consequences. Maybe the heat of the moment caught him, or maybe he just thought it was an angry lover's idle threat.

His next word was "If." It was his last, as promised.

She turned and left, and hadn't seen him since. Yakumo made no idle threats.

Tenma was fine within the week, and it felt to Yakumo as though the chimp that had been on her shoulder for so long—_watch yourself, Yakumo. Don't say anything disagreeable, Yakumo. You wouldn't want to start anything. You wouldn't want to get him upset—_had finally vanished.

It felt good. Damn good. She hadn't seen him since, which, while painful at first, started to feel pretty good itself after a while.

She hadn't seen anybody's thoughts since then. Little by little, she learned that she didn't have to. Over time, she began to feel the tug of that river that some people called fate, others called destiny, and a select few called _ka. _Felt it babble around her ankles, pushing her gently but undeniably. Gradually, after more than a few mistakes, she learned how to follow it.

And now the river had pushed her here. And all at once, she couldn't feel it anymore.

* * *

"Eh?"

Nobody had ever accused Kenji Harima of being quick on the uptake, nor of having fabulous mental acuity, but surely...

_I don't look _that _much different, do I? Or did he just …forget?_

"_I…mouto_-_san?_" Kenji blinked. Once, twice, and then a third time. _I thought she…with animals…then does that mean..._

He understood at once after that. "Nishido," he said, his voice grave and serious, and a little consoling—as best as he could make it, anyway. "I understand completely."

"Mmm?" Nishido said. "Yes, as I was saying, Ms. Tsukamoto here will--"

"Is your dog alright?"

Nishido stopped, and gaped at him, and now it was Yakumo's turn to stifle a laugh, her face lighting up as she clamped a hand to her mouth to muffle the sound. Which left Nishido completely lost.

--

A/N: Kind of an abrupt ending, I know--I don't really think I could go much further without going WAY too far, which I don't want to do right now, with my first round of midterms creeping up on me.

But hey, if you liked it, or even if you didn't, think about dropping me a review and telling me what I can do better, or what I can keep on doing. I'm always open to comments, and I've a good record taking people up on them.

Thanks for reading! Expect other characters to start making appearances in the next few chapters. I'm not sure how this is going to unwind yet, but I'm excited to find out.


	5. 3: Worlds Divide

Author's notes

Reviewer's corner

First of all, thanks to everybody who reviewed! (in reverse order) RNSaga, Napster, really-great-noodles1, Owaranai Destiny, Keikun4283, idiot564, RedPBass, hopeless, Crain, Endless Sky, Sherwin, and Al! Ooh-fuckin-rah, and rock the fuck out, and all them other vulgar variations on a theme.

Nigakki is now officially over, and it's pretty apparent to me that there will be a sangakki, so I guess I'm not breaking anybody's canon yet. Which is good.

Special thanks go to RedPBass for his help identifying some areas where my sentence structure could use some … structuring.

Owaranai Destiny: I'm actually a fairly meticulous planner; in my subconscious, anyway. Worry not, Karen isn't gratuitous. (Can you call somebody gratuitous? Even if they're not a token character? I'm totally taking gratuitous back).

really-great-noodles1 (I really like that name): Harima hasn't changed much, eh? I hope to convince you otherwise; but all in good time.

Sherwin: Let me know what you think of Eri's "what-happened-the-last-few-years story" :)

I don't know if you've noticed, but (as in all of my fiction) each of my chapters are titled after songs that I feel fit the chapter. Guess the artist (google is cheating) and get a gold star!

* * *

_Some people carry on / some just stay right where they are / our worlds divide the sight_

_I'm afraid that our stories will never be told_

* * *

Chapter three

Worlds divide

"My…dog?"

Nishido gaped at one, then the other. When he'd done that, he started the process over from the beginning; this went on for quite some time, but he wasn't the only one struck near-dumb from the surprise. Harima's deductive logic hadn't really undergone any advances in something like twelve years, but his wit _had _sharpened—this was almost a requirement for professional writing, really, and at the same time, a by-product of the career—and he knew well enough, at least, when he was wrong. Unless he and Yakumo had both acquired some incredible precognitive gift, there was nothing wrong with Nishido's dog.

Maybe it was Harima's innocence that had been left in the dust by the rest of his brain. That childish, naïve trust, in spite of all circumstance. _How could daddy be gone? He said he was only going out for a pack of cigarettes. _Yakumo had said she was going to do something with animals. Then, what was she doing standing in the office of Shakodan Publications' head editor? What was Nishido doing introducing her as his new editor?

And why the _hell _couldn't he think of anything to say? That wasn't him.

"You're…working here, _imouto-san_?" he said, lacking anything more substantial to say on the matter. Maybe it was the surprise, or his brain struggling with the two perceived opposites—Yakumo's career path as she had explained it to him over half a decade ago, and the reality of what he was seeing in front of him; or maybe it was simply a lack of sleep, taking its toll on his waterlogged brain.

Or maybe it was that she was _laughing. _While two of the most important men at Shakodan Publications stared at her each other in apish confusion, she held her hand over her mouth politely and seemed to positively shake with mirth.

"What's wrong with my dog?" Nishido said at last, which only seemed to add to Yakumo's amusement. "When I left, he was fine."

"Nothing's wrong with your dog," Harima said after a brief pause. "I think." For some reason he couldn't quite orate, he looked at Yakumo, as though searching for confirmation. This sent her into a fresh bout of giggles, and for the moment, it seemed that the two men could do nothing but wait for them to subside—Nishido, nowhere near as thick as Kenji, had discerned that maybe the artist was blowing smoke out of his ass. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd done it.

No, that wasn't right, either. As the pretty girl giggled over something he didn't quite understand, he studied Harima. Studied his expression, somewhere between pensive and…something else; something he could see in the worried jilt in his eyes, the crease in the bridge of his nose, in his eyes, wide open. It was the eyes that caught him; they were wild and frightened, like those of a child not quite sure where his mother was, lost in a mall but not yet at the point where he would become a screaming wreck. On the way, no doubt, but not there yet.

It reminded him a little bit of a helpless kid. It reminded him a little more of a story Yoshida had once told him.

Somewhere near the beginning of Harima's career, before he'd quit drinking and started to make it big, Yoshida had said—after putting a few back, of course; the man made a clam look chatty until he'd put a few back—and before he'd really gotten to know anybody at the office, he'd apparently been out getting shit-hammered (people like Harima, Yoshida said, didn't go drinking. They went to get shit-faced or they didn't go at all) at a local dive during the Winter Olympics. A few minutes before midnight, Yoshida had gotten a call on his work cell—it had scared both him and his wife plenty cute, because they had both been ankle-deep in a horror movie, since neither of them ever gave two shits about the Olympics—and when he answered it, Harima had been bawling. Yoshida took it in the kitchen, he said, since he had a feeling it would spoil his horror-movie mood and he didn't want his wife to lose it too, and a good thing too. Kenji told him to turn the Olympics on. He did, and didn't see anything special—a skier named…Tsukimo or Yukamoto or something, (at this point, something niggled at Nishido, but he put it out of his head for the moment) beating the Americans and the Russians at what was apparently their own game. Harima hadn't been particularly coherent after that, so Yoshida told him to stay where he was, that he would come pick him up.

By that point, he'd put more than a few back, so his descriptive talents were typically fairly limited, but he managed to get the point across: Harima was an absolute trash heap by the time he picked him up. He couldn't quite get the words straight in his mouth to describe precisely what the man looked like at that moment—maybe that was why he was editing and not writing professionally—but the gist was this: It was the eyes. Not because they were bloodshot from the tears and cigarette smoke; not because of the twin chalky streaks tracing down his cheeks; not because of the way his eyebrows were ruffled and matted, or the way his pupils didn't seem to quite dilate properly. It was the way they were wide-open and inviting, pleading. _Come back, Mommy. Don't leave me. Don't make me do that again. _

Like a child's.

Like a child's._ Tsu. Tsu. _

_Tsukimo? Tsukamo? Tsumako? _

_No, there was another syllable. _

"Do you two know each other?" At this point, Nishido felt that he was essentially pointing out that, holy shit, this room was filled with air, but he felt it needed to be clarified.

"Eh…" Harima shook his head once, closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he looked a couple of worlds better. "Yeah, we did. We were friends back in high school. I…did a lot of my first work with her as my assistant."

_This _surprised Nishido. Wasn't Harima the one who always refused any kind of assistance in the rough stages of his work? The one who penned and inked all of his own pages because, as he said, "it was all he had to do"?

"Harima was the person who got me interested in manga," Yakumo said politely, seemingly now more or less under her own power, "but I could never draw as well as my sister, Tenma."

Nishido thought that maybe Harima's eyes widened a little bit at that, but he couldn't prove it in a court of law.

"So you pursued a career in editing instead?" Nishido found himself saying this as though they were interviewing her all over again, screening her to see if she would find herself separated from the trash that liked to float around the lower levels of the building, trying to "network." Maybe they were.

"Yes, but I also…I like working with the artists. I like helping them. It makes me feel as though…" she trailed off, and Harima frowned, and then, again, his eyes widened a little bit. Maybe, anyway.

"What is this, Nishido? Another interview? Haven't you already hired her?" Harima was quickly regaining whatever it was he'd lost when he recognized Yakumo, and not all of them were pleasant—in fact, Nishido was relatively surprised by how utterly _exhausted _the man looked; between the bags under his eyes, nearly purple from several nights of restless sleep, and the way his shoulders sagged, seemingly ready to crumple from the force of gravity, Nishido found it a small wonder that the man didn't just collapse on the spot. Yoshida had told him a few times that he needed to watch Harima pretty closely, because if he didn't the kid would overwork himself. Difference was, Kenji tended to overdo it even when he was overdoing it; apparently, he had once fallen asleep at a publicity stunt, because he hadn't slept in half a week. Funny thing about it was, he hadn't drawn in half a week either; Nishido had wondered what, then, he overworked himself at, but Yoshida had told him not to ask, just to be careful, and to watch him closely. Nishido had promised to do that.

Apparently, he had slacked on keeping that promise.

"No, nothing like that," Nishido said. "I'm very sorry, Miss Tsuka—" he stopped dead.

_Tsukamoto._

_That was the skier's name. _He knew it without a doubt.


	6. Worlds Divide, part two

Nishido felt his heart speed up in his chest, as it usually did when his brain started moving_ fast, _like it rarely did anymore, like it had almost non-stop when he was younger.

_It has to be a coincidence. It's not _that _uncommon a name, is it? _

He had read somewhere that there were no coincidences; only the workings of what the author had titled _ka, _really just a fancy word for "fate." He never quite believed it, and yet…

And yet, something about this was wrong, or it was if the name was only coincidence. Harima's reaction to the girl, and his reaction to that name—Tenma. Yoshida had once told him that he strongly felt that Harima's latent alcoholism was, in spite of all his AA bullshit about "lost dreams" and "misspent youth," about a girl.

Maybe this was it.

Maybe most people wouldn't have given a shit, but this sort of thing was most of Nishido's job, and really, most of his _life. _He had been the only male gossip back during _his _high school years, a few months after the dinosaurs checked out for good, and he had been a damn good one, at that. Maybe he should have been a gossip columnist, but innovation in writing wasn't his talent, and so it wasn't his job. His job was to make sure _all _of his artists got their pages out on time, which typically meant taking a swim in their personal lives once and a while.

So this was important to him.

It occurred to him that both Harima and Yakumo were staring at him, and he colored a little, then said, "I'm very sorry, Miss Tsukamoto, for my rudeness, is what I was about to say."

"Something eat your tongue?" Harima said, still recovering.

"Maybe it did, Kenji," Nishido said. "But I seem to have gotten better."

_Tsukamoto. Kenji's _trigger.

Nishido found himself questioning his decision to hire the young girl. She was good, all right—she came with the highest possible recommendations from the editorial staff at Jump. She was, according to them, extremely meticulous in her work, and she got on with just about anybody she had to work with (though she was a bit quiet). To top it off, she was bright and pretty. For some reason, _manga-ka _liked bright and pretty. They said it gave them "inspiration." Nishido might've said it gave them something else entirely, but who was he to argue with results?

In any event, he wanted them out of his office right now. Wanted some time to think—and to dig.

Yes, the digging was the important part. If this girl was going to be a danger to Kenji's place on _the wagon_, Nishido would have her out of there. Kenji's career was starting to take off—he didn't know it yet, but it was—and damned if Nishido would let him fall back into that pit he'd been in at the start of his career.

Damned indeed.

* * *

Somehow, the prospect of leaving the office scared Kenji more than the prospect of staying there with the Head Editor, who seemed to have gotten a bee stuck up his ass at some point shortly after he snapped out of his stupor. In spite of this, he presently found himself standing directly outside that office, alone. The man had kept Yakumo, saying he needed to talk to her for just a couple minutes longer, and something inside of Kenji began yammering at him almost as soon as he crossed the threshold, babbling at him in a frantic, incoherent voice to _get the fuck out of there, _to leave and not come back, to just go home and sleep for the rest of eternity or at least until he was rested. 

His feet, however, refused to move, which only caused his head to babble louder; like a brook filled with helpless, drowning men and women in the final seconds of their lives, before they were swallowed by the undertow.

All he could do was stand there.

He didn't know how much time passed before Yakumo emerged from the office, her face displaying a kind of discontent that he wasn't used to from her. She seemed a little surprised to see him standing there—as though she had been expecting him to just pick up and leave when Nishido kicked him out.

_That's not right._

_She looks like maybe he _told _her that was what you would do._

_What the fuck is that bastard—_

"Ken…Harima," she said, her voice displaying the same kind of surprise that her face belied, which Kenji found even stranger: She had never been somebody to wear her emotions on her sleeve; why, then, could he read her like a book, now of all times?

"_Imouto-san_," Kenji said, maybe by way of a greeting, his throat working automatically, as it often had with her. "What did that old battleaxe want you for?"

"Nothing," Yakumo replied, and Kenji sniffed her lie before he could breathe.

_Have you changed that much?_

_Become more like your_

"Alright, then," Kenji said, and then silence fell between them like a brick dropped off the top of a building. They started for the elevator, both of them, at a salaryman's pace.

They rode the elevator down to the first floor in silence as sheer as a wall of ice, neither of them willing to make eye contact with the other; maybe it was the elevator effect, but Kenji had a feeling it was something else entirely.

They didn't, in fact, speak to each other again until they reached the exit door, the hum of the lobby filling their ears as though trying desperately to compensate for their mutual silence. If it hadn't been for Yakumo, they might have left in silence, as well; Kenji was beginning to feel a little like he had back at AA; out of place. _This isn't part of my life. I'm not an alcoholic, I just like to drink, and who doesn't? What is this, trying to change my life without my permission? Why don't I just get up and leave? _And yet, he couldn't, no matter how he tried. His head would babble at him but his feet refused to budge. Once he had made it as far as standing up, and everybody had stared at him. He had wound up making a small speech about something he hadn't even considered until that point—and wouldn't consider ever again, it was really just something to say—and receiving a small ovation that meant nothing to him.

"Harima," she said gently, as though speaking to a clam, apt to lock up and drift away if she wasn't careful.

"Kenji's fine, _imouto-san,_" Kenji said, not at all surprised that he had to make that clear to her.

"Kenji," she said, and then smiled for the first time since he'd seen her. Her smile was different than it used to be, he saw—still gentle, that had never changed, because she had never been anything but gentle, but there was an element of … what was that? Sadness?

No.

It was just …maturity. The feeling which could not rightly be called sadness, but that nobody would ever mistake for joy, that simply worked its way into most everybody as time passed and friends and lovers faded into the backdrop of life.

Somehow, this tugged at Kenji's heart more than he thought it would. _Imouto-san _was no longer _imouto-san. _No longer quite so delicate—he saw this in her as the grin worked its way along her face. She was…

_(Lost.)_

Grown up.

Just like he was.

"What is it, Yakumo?" Her name sounded strange passing through his lips. Even in the few stories he told about high school to the few friends he had, he called her _imouto-san. _ So who was this _Yakumo? _"I'm starting to get cold, so we should probably get going."

"Do you want to go somewhere and eat?" she said quietly, timidly, and he saw once again how time had changed her—it wasn't much, but she was more forward now than she had been, even with friends. "I know you're …" _busy? Exhausted? Scared out of your tiny little fucking mind? I'm a lot of things, _imo—_Yakumo _"that you've got a lot to do, but if it's not too much…"

Part of Kenji desperately wanted to decline her invitation; it was the part of him he'd acquired at AA—the part that actively denied those things that he knew would be bad for him, but that he wanted to do anyway.

Another part of him, though…

_Missed her._

In spite of it all, in spite of how frightened he was—whether of returning to how he was during high school or directly after it he wasn't sure—he missed her. She was good to him. Sweet. Gentle. Patient. Maybe he hadn't told her that, ever—in fact, he was sure he hadn't; how could he?—but she had been…important to him. A good friend. Somebody he could rely on.

_Then why did she lie to me?_

_Maybe she didn't._

It was a testament to the speed of Kenji Harima's brain that he took so long to come to this conclusion—that maybe Yakumo _had, _in fact, been intending to "do something with animals," but that something had changed. People did that sometimes. They changed. Yakumo certainly had—the timid _good-sister _backdrop in her eyes was all but gone, replaced by a sort of mature shyness that reminded him a little bit of a woman he'd once met.

_Omi. _

Harima shook his head. Omi was another one of his _triggers. _One of the things that AA had encouraged him to pretend didn't exist.

What _wasn't _a trigger, though, when you got down to it? AA could dumb it down to "this is okay, this isn't," but underneath all that bullshit, hadn't Harima taken to drink not because of any of those things by themselves, but because of everything? Nobody fled into the bottle from _something_. People ran to the bottle because they were running from _everything, _and they were out of ideasThey danced with the devil and looked him in the eye, and what stared back was an empty glass snifter of whiskey.

_When you stare into the abyss…_

"Sure," Kenji said. "Be happy to. You look like you could use a meal or two anyway," he eyed her frame—skinnier than he remembered it, now that he looked carefully. Maybe not having to cook for her sister made her less likely to cook for herself.

A pang of worry bypassed the haze of exhaustion in his brain, and he pushed it aside. No need to worry, right? She was here now, and he could make sure she was looked after. Make sure she took care of herself.

It took him a second to realize that this was the first time he'd felt optimism, that driving force of his youth, long spent, poking its head out in at least three years.

_What the hell happened to you, Kenji? _It said.

What indeed.

"Do you have a car?" Yakumo asked, a little embarrassed. "I took the bus here, but…"

"I'll go you one better, Yakumo," Kenji said. He thought that, as her name left his mouth, her eyes widened a little bit. Thought he heard the minute hiss of her breath intensify just a little bit, but that may have just been his imagination.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she had been expecting to still be _imouto-san._

He hated to be the one to break the news to her, but somebody had to.

* * *

_I finally understood, all at once, and everything became clear to me. I raised my head to face him, my grin wide and my eyes glistening with joyful tears. To tell him that I understood. To tell him everything. That it would be okay now. _

_Everything would be okay now._

_The gun in his left hand went off twice. The first shot punctured my lung, deflated it. I felt my breath escape from my lips, and it felt a little bit like it did when I let go of that ledge. It felt like life, escaping from my fingers. His second shot took me in the shoulder. He hadn't been trained with a gun, not like I had been, so it went a little wild. If he'd had his druthers, I'm certain he would have taken my head off with that second shot, but as it was, I went down with no air in my lungs and just enough clarity of mind to draw my third gun, the one he'd never seen, from underneath my coat. I aimed like I never would again, and shot him in the head, not thinking about how badly the betrayal might have hurt if I'd lived long enough to think about it. Not thinking about the three years we'd spent as lovers, and as more than that. Not thinking about how good of a liar he was. _

_What I thought about was that I came to understand one more thing, the last thing I would ever understand, and I guess, in the end, that's why I wanted you to hear this story: _

_When you dance with the devil, don't ever look him in the eye. If you do, he'll have you. Like he had me. _

_He had me good, but you know what?_

_That's okay. _

_Goodbye, Eric. _

_Goodbye._

_ --  
_

Eri Sawachika found that she was sweating as she put her old ballpoint pen down next to the page. It wasn't because of the heat—it _was _hot, but English summers had _nothing _on Japanese summers, which were hot and humid and often not air-conditioned. Besides, she enjoyed the heat.

She was sweating from exertion and concentration, and she knew it. She felt like she'd just run a mile in heels.

But it was done. Only a first draft, true, but a big first draft. An important one. She picked up the enormous stack of papers from the desk in front of her and thumbed through them like a flipbook, enjoying the sensation of old, used paper on her fingertips.

And it _was _a big stack. Handwritten, it was perhaps three thousand pages. A huge waste of paper, if ever there was one, but Eri had never been able to compose onto a screen. She couldn't feel a screen like she could feel this. She couldn't do _anything _onto a screen.

Besides, who would want to?

This was it.

This was the important one. Her third novel, and she knew that it would probably be the most successful of her career. She wouldn't spend the rest of her life trying to match it, but only because she was too self-assured for that.

How did she know?

She just did. Her senses had already been keen, but six years in England, by herself, the first two of which were spent in near-impossible poverty, had sharpened them to a killing point. She couldn't have developed them, nor her talent, had she not lived like she did, and she was damn proud of it.

Not that anybody else was. They loved her books, but not her. That was normal; artists received confessions  
_(there's a word I haven't heard in that context in quite some time)_  
of love all the time, but none of them were really genuine. Fans loved _art, _but only friends could love _people_. That was fine.

Maybe this would be the one that would give her some freedom. Maybe even enough freedom to go back.

_And do what?_

_See them. _

_You haven't seen them in years. They wouldn't even remember your face._

_Horseshit and pepper. Friends don't do that._

_Eric did. _Eric was only a character, but even so…

She shook her head. Eric was only a character. They would remember.

Wouldn't they?


	7. 4: Evil Angel

Author's notes

Toshima-en is an amusement park in Tokyo. Go go gadget Google.

--

_Help me survive here alone / don't surrender_

_You are the faith inside me._

--

Chapter four

Evil Angel

Really, not a lot could be said about Eri Sawachika anymore. Not because she had no outstanding qualities, nor because she had turned into something despicable, as she was certain her father suspected she had since she left.

No, not a lot could be said about Eri Sawachika because nobody knew much about Eri Sawachika anymore. She was, of course, remembered by her old friends (in spite of her deepest, most repressed fears) and loved by her parents (in spite of their derision of her decision to be independent from the family fortune and all the responsibilities it entailed). But that was about it for her—she was a relatively unknown entity in the fast, brutal world of English art, certainly no threat to the major authors of the day. Or the hour, anyway.

She knew that was about to change. Her publisher knew it. Her agent knew it. It sort of …resonated from the manuscript that she handed her agent—a pudgy, sweet lady who always insisted on buying her tea and a cake when they saw each other—and that feeling of _rightness _only became more powerful when the woman read it. It wasn't just _good. _It was _incredible, _she said. It was a work of science fiction and horror, which was new to Eri, but it was science fiction in the old style—the important style. The style which had served, in the capable hands of a few talented authors over the ages, as a sort of barometer for society. And it was horror in a style long-forgotten in the age of the Grudge and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre; a horror reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft, of King at his very best. It was more_ Necronomicon _than _The Shining, _but whatever it was, it was both terrifying and insightful.

And what was best and worst, was that they knew it. Her agent knew it almost at once—that woman had a nose for talent, and she practically scented it from the pages themselves.

Most authors would have been overjoyed at this. At the scent of impending success—more pleasing by far than the feeling of impending doom that they felt approaching as the rent became due each month. Eri, though…

She was about to be thrust back into the public eye.

She could feel it coming. Her colleagues (if indeed a writer _had _any colleagues) patted her on the back, told her she was going to be a hit. A month and a half later, after editing and drafting (Eri's books needed very little editorial work, though she was certainly no Anne Rice in denying them what they _did _need) pre-sales of the book would skyrocket, paying off the advertising campaign which centered around Eri herself. Eri saw that coming, too.

She saw it all coming, and almost went back and tore the three-thousand odd pages to shreds right then.

It wasn't the money. Money was just money.

It wasn't the fame, either. She wasn't afraid of the public eye. She hated it, but was far from unused to it.

It wasn't even the dance she would have to do; a tango around the press, a polka with the publishers, maybe even a waltz with some movie pricks.

It was the fact that, once again, her life was about to belong to the public.

She had done her best writing when she was alone, in her shitty London flat, hunched over her desk at two in the morning trying to blink a hangover away. She did her best dreaming when she was flat on her back, still naked, her solitary sheet pulled up to her chin, watching some nameless bastard dress himself after five minutes of unsatisfying sex, both of them fully aware that they would probably never meet again. No matter how much she liked him. She did her best plotting when she rode the bus, sandwiched between a pair of rank bums, both of whom seemed fairly intent on copping a nice, innocent feel just before their stop.

She hadn't just welcomed her shitty life in London. She had actively fought to keep it. There had been offers, of course. Businesses, drawn to the strength of her name. Modeling agencies, drawn to the strength of something else entirely. (They _had _gotten a little smaller in recent years—a by-product of too many nights without enough money to eat AND live in a flat, welfare state or no—but not noticeably, probably, to anybody but her). She had turned them all down.

She _liked _how it was. She liked being on her own. Independent. It gave her

_misery_

freedom. Inspiration. She could never write like this in her father's mansion. No, not like this.

But, of course, now it was unavoidable. She could give all of the money to some charity or another, sure, but then she'd just get more from her publisher. Celebrities (was that what she would be? The thought disgusted her) gave money to charities all the time. Mostly they were reimbursed by their respective companies. Draws attention to their name, and for what? A measly few million euros, but not out of _their _pockets.

And she couldn't deny it forever. She liked the way she was, but she wasn't stupid enough to throw money out when it shoved itself in her face. And really, wasn't this what she'd _wanted?_ To make her own living off of her own art?

_maybe there'll be a book tour_

_maybe you'll go back to_

It must have been. That was what she'd slaved for, starved for, and on more than one occasion, fucked for. (Or had that been for her? Again, that image of herself, clutching the sheet to her chin, floated to the surface of her mind, and she wondered).

She sighed and clutched the pen in her hands. It was a nice pen. Ballpoint. She had gotten it on her last day in Japan

_(from him)_

_(he told her to do something with it)_

and it was probably the only thing she'd kept from that little island, save for a few _yukata _for the stuffier days. (Writing in the buff was fun, but sometimes a challenge).

He hadn't liked it. That bastard, Eric. The only one she saw for more than two nights in a row. More than a year, in fact. She had lost track a long time ago. He'd always thought that odd.

It was his leaving

_didn't you tell him to leave?_

that had inspired the book. She hadn't ever attributed much to the finer points of writing—time of day, type of pen, color of clothing, that sort of thing; none of it was important to her creative process—but, maybe out of spite, or maybe out of something else, she had written that entire book in the pen she had kept. It felt good, but she knew it wouldn't last long.

Not long at all.

Her phone rang. Her stomach shot down out of her stomach and probably knocked somebody on the floor beneath her out cold.

No, not long at all, now. Now that Kimchee's fight with Eric was over, she supposed it was her turn to dance with the devil. Because, really, that's what Eric was, and even if he hadn't known it, Kimchee certainly had.

He was a devil.

_Why, then, did she love him anyway? How could she love a devil like that?_

She supposed the answer was somewhere in the three-thousand odd pages that her editor was presently drooling over, but if it was there, it certainly didn't come out of _her _head. Not really.

Grimacing, she stood, pushing her ragged little chair out from behind her, and walked over to the phone to answer it, quietly telling herself, _it won't be as bad as you think, Eri. Anybody else would _kill _for this chance, now stop being a spoiled brat. It won't be as bad as you think. _

It was.

--


	8. Evil Angel, part two

It wasn't like she hadn't ridden on a motorcycle before. God, no. HE _(better known as The Rat Bastard) _had owned a motorcycle, too, and some of Yakumo's best memories of HIM were of their night rides—leaving at dusk and following the coastline until dawn. Their third such ride, as soon as they saw the sun, they decided to find the nearest secluded area they could—a private little beach surrounded by trees—and they made love as the sun rose, seemingly all around them, the fine sand that gently scratched Yakumo's back glowing a fiery orange, nearly the same color as HIS skin. They had chosen that to be one of their "traditions," and had remained faithful to it to the last.

Yakumo was nowhere near as upbeat and positive as her sister, but she could still treasure those memories. Even if the taste in her mouth was bad, she remembered that some of the meal had been…

_Perfect._

That was the word for it.

So why, then, was she so exuberant now, clinging to Harima on the back of his motorcycle?

_Are you expecting him to strip down and make love to you if we pass a beach?_

No longer a schoolgirl, (or a virgin, for that matter) Yakumo had thought herself more or less immune to such thoughts and the embarrassment they brought. Even so, she felt herself reddening at the thought of it, and she worried for a moment that Kenji would be able to feel the heat on his back.

He didn't, of course. He didn't glance in the rearview mirror, either, (a habit which made Yakumo a bit nervous) so he didn't see her face, crimson as a beet.

He just drove. Weaving his way through traffic, (illegal) gunning it when he could, (illegal) and stopping when he absolutely had to (occasionally illegal). It scared the piss out of her, but it was exhilarating at the same time. HE had always been a relatively safe driver.

_If you don't stop comparing him to The Rat Bastard, you're going wind up telling _him _to find a beach before too long. _She understood full-well—being psychic had greatly sharpened her perception of the human psyche—that women still bearing the foul taste in their mouths were likely to …become enthralled with anybody who could be considered even loosely better than their ex. Men, too, but she didn't know that.

"Oi, Yakumo," he said as they darted between a Hyundai and some sort of trash heap that probably didn't even bear its markings anymore. "Hold on, okay? We're almost there, but I need to be two lanes over if we want to park."

She tightened her grip around his waist, and wondered why he had stopped calling her _imouto-san. _

The motorcycle jerked with startling grace to their right, effectively cutting off a car about twice their size, which jerked to a stop just in time _not _to send them flying into the car ahead's rear windshield. The pudgy man at the helm shouted something angry at them that they couldn't understand, and, Yakumo saw in the rear-view mirror which Harima seemed so intent on not using, made a hand gesture that they _could_ understand. Harima didn't notice; he seemed too intent on his next move, which even Yakumo could see: A pair of small hybrids driving with about a motorcycle's length of space between them. Up ahead, the restaurant Harima had told her about, about a quarter of a kilometer from where they were.

Unfortunately, the two cars were also getting closer to each other, and behind them was a solid wall of traffic.

She couldn't see it, but Harima was grinning. Running on fumes, having not slept well in days, and he was _grinning. _She gritted her teeth just as he went for it, refusing to admit that she was grinning too, just a little bit.

Leaning over so far that it seemed to Yakumo for a second that they would simply tumble to the ground, bam-crunch, the end of the whole mess, Harima nudged the bike's speed up, the engine already roaring like a dragon. They began to quickly drift to their left, where the other car was about two meters from blocking them entirely—quickly, Harima straightened the bike up and suddenly they were moving diagonally, relative to traffic, and a second later, in what seemed a blur of horns and paint to Yakumo, they were in the last available space in the endless ocean of automobiles for at least a kilometer. Continuing their diagonal motion, Harima nudged it over to the curb, and just as the line of traffic came to a halt, so did he. Yakumo jerked forward with a start.

Dismounting to the tune of a flurry of horns and angry words, Harima said, "Come on, Yakumo. We're walking the rest of this." Yakumo followed suit, dropping off the side of the bike with as much grace as she could muster considering that her knees no longer seemed to want to support her weight; Her knees felt like she had after the day she'd spent with The Rat Bastard at Toshima-en.

The rest of her didn't, though. The rest of her hadn't felt like that in quite a while.

The western-style restaurant was a little dingy—the off-white porcelain floors were sticky, as though they hadn't been cleaned in quite a while, and the odor of stale tobacco seemed to have woven itself into the fraying fabric of the chairs—but filled with the hum of cheery conversation and the sweet smell of cooking meat. There was a bar up front flanked by a row of stools patterned with polka-dot fabric in relatively good shape, and it was towards them that Kenji led Yakumo as they entered, a small bell _dinging _over their heads as they opened the door.

The stools weren't something that Yakumo was entirely used to sitting on, but they weren't as hard as they might have been—her jeans made sitting in general considerably less of a challenge than it might have been were she wearing a skirt. As they finished seating themselves, a big, friendly-looking man came out of a set of saloon-style doors from behind the bar. He took a look at Kenji, and then at Yakumo, and his meaty face broke into a radiant grin.

"Kenji, you old _dog!_" he shouted, his voice so powerful that Yakumo could swear she heard it echo. Even so, only a couple of people shut up to see what was going on—the rest were probably used to it. "Look what you goddamn brought in with you! I don't even know if Omi would _allow _me t'serve such a sight with food!" he laughed at this, and Kenji smiled appreciatively. "How am I supposed to shoot man-shit with you with such a pretty girl here?"

Yakumo felt herself redden slightly, unsure of what was going on, and before she could think about it, she heard herself say, "I—no, please don't mind me, I—"

She stopped herself at the look in the man's eye, something she had absolutely no way to read. She didn't notice Kenji looking at her out of the corner of his eye, his mouth curled up in a little grin.

They stayed that way for a full ten seconds, Yakumo staring, a little frightened, or maybe just nervous, and the man doing whatever it was that he was doing—in two years of friendship with him, Kenji still didn't know precisely what to call it as he stood there, eying you, waiting for you to crack.

She didn't, though, and he burst out laughing after a few seconds more, gruff and powerful and genuine—as Yakumo's muscles relaxed, she found herself smiling along with him, liking him in spite of whatever intentions she'd had upon entering the restaurant.

"Knock it off, old man," Kenji growled unthreateningly. "You're gonna scare my assistant off before I get a chance to."

"_This _pretty thing is your assistant?" the man roared, his grin positively stupid. "Damn, Kenji, are you still going out with that one—you know, that one girl, the…ah…"

"Nope," Kenji said lightly. "Now cut it out. Like I said—"

"Ah, I'm not scary, Kenji, you're just a pansy."

Kenji Harima, at nearly six-two, weighing in at ninety-two kilograms, most all of it muscle, and victor of more street fights than he could count on one hand (and he couldn't necessarily count much higher than that anyway) could only smile at this. Yakumo said, as politely as she could, "I don't think he's scary, Kenji."

Kenji grinned at that. "I didn't think you would. You stood up to that damn Chief Editor Gotou when you were still just a kid, and this guy isn't half as scary as that bastard was."

Somehow, the phrase _when you were still just a kid _nagged at Yakumo. Not _bothered _her, precisely, only seemed…strange to her. She hadn't seen Harima since she'd been _still just a kid, _and now it was almost natural enough that felt as though they were picking up where they left off. So wasn't she _still _"just a kid," then?

No, that wasn't right. _You grew up, Yakumo. Nobody likes it, but everyone does it._

"That Gotou? _She _stood up to him?" the big man behind the counter said, sounding amazed. "Back when I was working over there, even _I _was scared of that giant bastard."

"I shit thee not, Kenta," Kenji said. "She's the one I was telling you about! Just walked right up to him and said, 'is it the Chief Editor's job to scare new artists?'"

"And then," Kenta said, turning to Yakumo, "he just about shat himself and died on the spot, eh? That's to hear him tell it, even, so probably he did a little more than that."

Again, Yakumo froze, innate shyness taking over. She didn't want to embarrass Harima, but…he had practically, as Kenta had said, _shat himself and died. _

"I…"

"Saw nothing of the sort," Kenji snapped, not so much at her as at Kenta. "Now are you going to bring us some food or am I going to have to get up and kick your sorry ass?"

"He dances like a ballerina, eh?" Kenta said, snapping a wink at Yakumo, who reddened a little more. "He chose the wrong line of work, but I guess if you've ever opened one of his books you'd figure that out."

"Food or ass," Kenji growled again, still not threatening. "You pick."

"Fine, fine," Kenta said. "What will the lovely young lady be having today?"

"Um…" Yakumo hesitated. She didn't actually know what was served here—the style was western, but she'd seen at least one person eating fried noodles. Her mind started moving quickly, trying to fix on precisely what kind of noodles, wondering if she should just ask for a menu or—

"She'll have what I have."

Or she could have what Kenji had. Kenta gave Kenji a strange look, and then nodded and vanished into the back.

Kenji shook his head and looked at her. "Is that alright?"

She smiled at him warmly, more appreciative of the fact that he'd bailed her out than of the food. "It is," she said. "And thank you."

"Sorry about him," Kenji said apologetically. "I guess I wasn't thinking when I brought you here—Kenta's a good guy, but he can be a bit over-the-top when he's not watching his manners, which is pretty much whenever his wife isn't around."

"I don't mind," Yakumo said, folding her hands in her lap. "Really. And thank you for…you know."

He shrugged. "They have menus here, but I wouldn't touch them without gloves, personally." A few customers—the same ones who had stirred at Kenta's roarings—looked at Kenji at this, slightly alarmed, but he didn't notice. "Plus, it's hard to think when that fucking giant is staring at you. Besides, I ordered you something good. I think you'll like it."

She smiled at him, and as she did, Kenta reappeared with two heaping plates of noodles, which he set before them more gently than she would have thought possible.

"Put it on your tab?" Kenta said.

"Always," Kenji replied with a small grin.

"You wish, you broke bastard," Kenta laughed uproariously again. "Keep a tab for a fuckin' writer, that'll be the day."

He vanished back into the kitchen a few moments later, leaving Yakumo with her plate, which smelled deliciously of garlic and meat, to the point where it made her eyes water. She smiled again at Kenji, who tore into his like a man who hadn't eaten in days. Maybe he hadn't.

_He knows what I like. After all this time, he still remembers. _

She picked up a set of wooden chopsticks from beside her plate, clapped her hands together, and murmured, "I'm eating now," for the first time in many weeks. (Living alone tended to strip one of one's manners).

_He still remembers._

She brought the noodles to her lips, allowing herself another moment to savor their smell, and then gently put them in her mouth.

_After all this time…_

Her mouth exploded. Heat seemed to rise up directly from the chopsticks, and her eyes flared open, tears filling them almost immediately. She gave a soft scream, for her throat could do no more than that, and nearly dropped the noodles in her lap. Harima looked over at her, blinked twice, and then his eyes flared too.

"Spicy…" she murmured, dropping her chopsticks onto her plate.

"You…can't eat spicy," Harima muttered, gently pushing his water towards her, eyes downcast and face beet-red. "I…completely forgot. Sorry."

_He really is a hermit, _she thought as she guzzled the water. _Really, really is._

_--_

A/N: Firstly, "I'm eating now," should be taken as "ittadakimasu," a Japanese phrase said at the beginning of a meal. (If you're curious, you typically say "gochisousama" at the end).

Second, I know it kind of ended abruptly. That would be called "writers block" in action. I kind of …ran out of that train of thought, and anything new would take many more pages than I'm willing to keep you all waiting for. More later!

As always, thanks for reading! If you liked it, or even if you didn't, consider feeding me reviews! And check out my bonus chapter, Until the End!


	9. 5: Tokyo

Author's notes:

Shit, it's been a while. Almost half a year since I updated this thing last time. In all honesty, I didn't think I would have updated it again at all. I'm tangled down with a funky little mix of getting a degree in Computer Engineering, having a girlfriend, and writing five other fanfics and two original novels. (Maybe.)

And then I got a review on my other SR story, and then, by coincidence, as I was riding the bus back to my house for Spring Break, I read the most recent chapter of this story while listening to the title track of this chapter. (No cheating—gold star if you guess the artist). Everything changes at home when you come back. Seems a little bit scarier. Nobody's here anymore.

So, from that, I give you this. Please enjoy it, and thank you for reading.

Remember, in Japan, it's normal to slurp noodles. _You _try and eat them with chopsticks.

Oyako is short for _oyako donburi, _and is an old Japanese peasant recipe in which chicken, a sauce very similar (though not identical) to teriyaki, and egg are boiled and poured over rice. It's very easy to make, and quite delicious. Especially, I suppose, when Yakumo makes it.

Tomiko Van is the singer from the band _Do as Infinity_. When the band broke up, she went solo, and now enjoys a lesser, but still noteworthy, measure of success. (In fairness, DaI was wildly popular, which is hard to live up to.)

Nerima is a ward in Tokyo which is famous for producing many famous Manga-ka, including Rumiko Takahashi.

I'm trying out a chapter format similar to the one I use in _Fake _and _It's So Cowardly_. Tell me what you think. Additionally, I won't be splitting this chapter into halves.

* * *

_The person who gave me this old guitar had said that Tokyo is scary. _

* * *

Chapter five  
Tokyo

* * *

**One**  
_In the bus that would take me to the station  
I tried to send my friend an email  
But something was different  
_

* * *

_Tokyo._

In a lot of ways, Tokyo was a lot like London. Size aside, they were both very old cities which had modernized in some sections more quickly than in others since they had been built. Some neighborhoods seemed to have stopped growing around the '30s, while others could nearly have been mistaken for a section of downtown New York. There was something about it which very much resembled nearly every other capital city on the planet, and yet there was something about it which was distinctly Japanese that had nothing to do with the architecture or layout.

Flying almost a mile above it, it almost seemed as though Tokyo had not changed. Could not change, really, but that couldn't be true, and maybe that was what made Tokyo so fucking scary.

Because Eri Sawachika knew that even in the short time she had been gone, Tokyo had changed. Hell, Tokyo changed every day. Construction, destruction, death, new life, new companies, new bankruptcies, new arcades, new movies, old movies, old streets, new subway cars, old musicians making a comeback, new musicians making a business; anything she had been used to could be gone at this point. The restaurant where they all used to gather and laugh and sometimes cry could have gone out of business and there was shit she could do about it. If she asked a student at her old school if she had ever heard of the woman who had been Eri's favorite singer while _she _had been in high school, could the student tell her? Would she just stare at her for a moment and apologize and keep walking? There was shit she could do about that too. Just go and pick up her compilation album and listen to it until she couldn't stand it anymore.

_Fuck._

_You're rambling again._

That was fine. As far as Eri was concerned, she could ramble all she wanted, editors be damned. (That was always their biggest qualm with her work—she rambled. She liked it. They thought it would lose interest in the common reader, and Eri always had to stop herself from saying, _fuck the common reader, they're paying to listen to me talk, and that's exactly what they're going to get._)

In Tokyo, nobody would listen to her ramble.

That was scary too. If she didn't intend to write anything, and nobody was around to listen to her ramble, she might go insane.

_If that's true, then why the hell did you bring the pen?_

Really, she knew that she couldn't stay in Tokyo forever, or at least, she couldn't seclude herself like she wanted to.

_Just came to start over like I did in London again. Find a shitty flat—er, apartment—and start writing again in poverty._

_If that was true, you'd have moved to Hong Kong or Beijing or__Paris or Berlin. Any big city was fine. By moving to a big city with which you are intimately familiar, you have effectively copped out._

_And so what if I fucking have? So what if I want to see my friends again?_

_So what if they don't want to see me again? After I just…flew off without saying anything to them._

_You said something to _him. _That's when _he _gave you the pen._

_Yeah. _

_And he was the one that first told me all about the fear. _His _fear._

_He was right, too._

_Tokyo _is _scary._

Eri's plane began its descent. Her stomach gave a little tumble.

Everything was different, wasn't it?

Eri looked out of the window, down at the little paper-drawing city that was slowly becoming three dimensional as they descended. She recognized none of it. All of it seemed utterly, unbearably alien to her.

_Everything is different, isn't it?_

_Every_one _is different._

_Fuck. _

Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She frowned, and dug it out, wondering as she did if it was another text from Him, wondering how she was doing or where she was or if they could maybe meet and talk over a cup of coffee and then fuck. He sent about one of those a week. She had yet to answer, but they had the redeeming quality of being annoying as hell as a selling point.

The phone number was one she didn't recognize. What was more, when she opened the phone up, the writing was in Japanese. Her phone was able to receive Japanese text messages (since she had purchased it in Japan—it was one of those things she'd have liked to replace, but couldn't have afforded to) but it took her brain a few seconds to adjust to seeing them. The kana seemed familiar—she knew them just fine, having lived in Japan for a number of years, but for some reason, she couldn't quite understa

_(oh, yeah. That one is "ne")_

It was strange how one little piece of information could start her brain working a certain way again. It was the nature of the human brain, really—it rarely _forgot _things; mostly it just locked them away in some compartment and then forgot where the compartment was. With a little prompting, one could remember things glimpsed even only in passing. Eri was very good at that, in fact; that had been one of the ways she got by in London. She knew where to find what for cheap, simply by paying attention to signs as she rode a bus or a bike.

The message read: _Heard you were getting back in town. Come grab a cup of coffee with me tomorrow? –Akira_

Eri read the message twice to make sure she hadn't made any errors, and then closed the phone and smiled, leaning back in her—coach-class (heresy for a Sawachika)—seat.

_At least Akira hasn't lost her information network._

Even so, she wondered privately how much Akira might have changed. Whether or not she would even recognize the girl when she saw her; if she would have to start looking awkwardly at tall, skinny girls until one of them said, tentatively, "Eri? Is that you?"

Whether or not, when that happened, they would even have anything to talk about.

Eri herself had changed in appearance considerably. She was a little taller now, though not much, and skinnier. She had had a good figure when she left. She still liked the way she looked—as much, anyway, as any girl did, a statement which carried with it the natural afterthought of "_except on _those days"—but her breasts were no longer as full, her hips no longer as curvy, her face no longer as robust. She was skinny, but it was not so much from exercise as from too many nights eating just rice. There were bags under her eyes now that only went away when she slept a full night, which was rare.

_What will Akira say when she sees me? Will she even recognize _me?

For the first time in many years, she thought about calling her family and asking for money. All of a sudden, she didn't want to look like she did. She wanted to eat again; three square meals a day. She wanted to make her skin firmer again; wanted her breasts full; wanted muscle in her arms and stomach. (It was still there in her legs—she biked everywhere.) She hadn't thought about these things so intensely for years.

_Does Tokyo make me self-conscious? Is it something about the people here? When I was with Eric, it didn't bother him when I got skinnier. Maybe he was into that. Into the eviscerated look. He certainly smoked enough that he had the look about him. Thought it made him look artsier. Pretentious fucking bastard._

Without thinking about it, Eri dug her fingernails into the seat and did her best to bear with the little voice, taunting her in her head: _You're not over him yet, are you? You'd like him to just take you in the seat right now you'd do him for an hour and beg for more and stare out the window as he left instead and you'd love it and you wouldn't be able to wait until he came back. Cute little girl, still so in love, stupid cute little girl, looking in the mirror and pretending you're somebody again. _

Eri bit her lip a little. It hurt, but it didn't bleed. The voice receded.

The plane began to land. Narita airport again, after forever.

Even Narita looked a little different. The parking lot seemed bigger, and she thought it looked like there was another road leading into it.

Without meaning to, Eri shivered.

Tokyo was scary.

* * *

**Two**  
_I remember you_

* * *

It took about fifteen minutes to get Yakumo food that she could eat: Five to flag Kenta down and tell him what the deal was; five for him to stop laughing, and another five for him to actually make the food. Somehow, it seemed that the part in which he was laughing was much longer than that. 

While the man working in the kitchen cooked, Harima apologized, bowing his head and rubbing his neck sheepishly, a move comfortingly familiar to Yakumo.

"I'm really sorry about that, _imouto-san,_" he said. "I didn't even think about how weak you were against spicy foods, or…" he frowned, though her expression didn't change. "I mean, not to say that you're weak or anything, just that spicy foods did a lot of damage to you—hell, now look at me, I'm talking like I do at work."

Yakumo smiled, wondering how long it had been since she had heard Harima babble. In a way, it was almost comforting, a little piece of happier, easier days that had not left, only gone to ground for a while. Eventually, his apologetic rant died out on its own.

Unfortunately, this way, they ended up sitting, each facing the bar, not speaking to one another. Another piece of the _good old _days. After a few minutes, Kenta placed another bowl in front of Yakumo, winked at her, and placed a small bill in front of Kenji.

After it had cooled a minute, Yakumo picked up a noodle, blew on it, and, after a moment's hesitation, put it in her mouth, slurping the rest in quietly, almost delicately. Yakumo wondered if Kenji noticed. Probably he didn't.

"How is it?" Kenji asked without turning.

"It's very good." This was less than halfway true. She had had better ramen in many places. She wondered if he could tell this by listening to her.

Probably, he couldn't.

It was mildly depressing, but she refused to fault him for it. After all, he wasn't psychic.

The thought stung her more than it should have.

She picked up another bunch of noodles and guided them to her mouth. Again, almost no sound as she slurped them up. Nobody had ever had to train her to be a proper lady; it was just something that sort of…happened.

"So…how long have you been in editing now?" Kenji asked. He asked in the middle of one of her slurps, and her body pulled her two places at once: One towards being polite and answering immediately, and the other towards being polite and not dropping her food out of her mouth and back into the bowl.

Her solution was to hurry it as quickly as she could into her mouth, slurping loudly, trying desperately not to look at him or anybody else, and then chew and swallow without choking. She succeeded, but at the cost of what she saw as her dignity.

Without meaning to, Kenji smiled, strangely—but, somehow, endearingly—put at ease by her sudden loss of manners. "Sorry," he said with a smile which, underneath its earnestness, held a note of the hotshot he had once seen himself as. "But you don't have to worry about manners here."

"He's not kidding," Kenta shouted from the other side of the counter, apparently possessed with the ears of a bat, or at least a very talented teacher, startling Yakumo. "I'm pretty sure our last proper lady bolted sometime in the mid-nineties."

"Your wife?" Kenji asked.

"Her sister."

Kenji snorted, and, in spite of herself, Yakumo laughed too. It wasn't funny, of course; it was sad, since it was obvious he was being honest, and an admission like that was always a little sad. But at the same time, it _was _funny, and it confused Yakumo slightly to find that.

_And why is it funny?_

_Because you heard it at Jump every day. Somebody got kicked out of his wife's house for drinking too much. Somebody got fired for sending in pissed-on pages, which of course meant that they had already quit. Because you lived a sheltered life, Yakumo Tsukamoto, and now you don't, and you haven't since the rat bastard. _

The truth was, Kenji was as nervous as she was, and she knew it, and so did he. She didn't know if it was because of her or because of her  
_(it's a big bad sad world, big fat who gives a shit she'll be fine little Yakumo come back to bed)  
(my god you son of a bitch, this isn't some American or whoever you hate this week, this is my)_  
sister, but he was nervous, and somehow that was comforting. He had been nervous a couple of times around her. She found that she enjoyed remembering those times.

_Be careful, Yakumo. The world is scary, right? Big bad sad world, isn't that what he always said?_

_Big bad sad world, big fat who gives a shit. That's what he said._

_Big fat who gives a shit. That was what he said whenever something bothered you. That was what he told _you _to say whenever something bothered you, to harden you against the big bad sad world, but I wonder if maybe the truth was, he was just saying it because that was what he had, a big fat who gives a shit, right in the middle of his brain. _

"Harima?"

"Kenji."

Hesitation. "…Kenji."

"What is it, _imo—_Yakumo?" Was it really an old habit if he hadn't done it in years? _Big fat who gives a shit. Give the man a while to adjust._

"If it's all right with you, may I have a beer?" _What are you, his daughter?_ (Strangely enough, she told herself this in the same tone as the man who had first given her a big fat who gives a shit)"I mean…I'd like a beer, please."

All she got for a reply was a big, fat  
_(who gives a shit)_

silence. Even the noise of the restaurant seemed to have died down, though she knew that this was her imagination having a giggle at her expense. She wondered if he had heard her, but she knew that since she'd entered into the literary world, she had picked up the ability to speak from her gut, which was more important than people gave it credit for.

Something strange passed over Kenji's face, a little wave that shook a big, strong boat for just a second. A look of fear, and then of disbelief. _Is that gun real? That gun can't be real, you're fucking with me. Aren't you? Put it down, it makes me nervous. Put it down, man. PUT IT DOWN, or—_

It passed. It had given her goosebumps.

"Sure," he said.

"I'm sorry to make you pay," Yakumo said a bit hesitantly.

"Don't worry about it," Kenji said. "I'm in this business for the money. Don't you make more than I do?"

"I'm not sure." Yakumo felt more than a bit embarrassed, and without meaning to, blushed just so. _Is this really appropriate? Is he okay? _"Do you want one too?"

"A paycheck? If only, sister."

Yakumo smiled appreciatively, and then said, "Are you going to get a beer too?"

Again, that look, only there for a second. Again, goosebumps.

"No," he said.

"Okay."

Kenta was watching the two of them, and approached cautiously when Kenji caught his eye and flagged him down.

"What do you need, Kenji?"

"Some damn courtesy, please," Kenji said, very obviously trying to hide the fact that he was forcing banter. "And a beer."

Kenta refused to yield to outright disbelief, but Kenta was a very careful man, no matter how he seemed. "For you?"

"For her."

"And for you?"

"Probably a new bill."

Kenta eyed Yakumo again, and then said, "On the house. Don't tell the other customers; they'll think I like you."

Yakumo, mildly alarmed, said, "You don't need to—"

"It's only one, and only because you're pretty," Kenta said with a grin, waving her off. A minute later, he had a large, frothy mug of beer in front of her.

"The paper for the bill probably costs more than the beer," Kenji murmured.

"How the hell would you know?" Kenta winked.

"Keep talking, barkeep," Kenji growled. "See how far it gets you."

"He calls me barkeep now."

"Don't you have a job?"

"Sometimes." But Kenta left them alone anyway.

All the while, Yakumo couldn't help but think there was something different about their banter from even ten minutes ago, and for the first time in many years, she found herself wishing that she could once again see those little thoughts, floating so neatly above peoples heads.

_Not that I could ever see Harima's, anyway. _

She raised the mug to her lips, and while the first sip was less than savory, it was cool on her throat and tongue. The second was easier to swallow.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Kenji watching her out of the corner of his. She wondered if, if she were still a virgin, she would be able to read his thoughts just now.

_No. That's not the look he gave me. I know that look._

She put her mug down. She wasn't so thirsty after all.

They left shortly thereafter, and as he took her home on his motorcycle which was somehow less nostalgic than it had been on their way in, they said very little to each other. Kenji seemed tired, and while he was still friendly and even a bit nervous, even that was half-hearted. He seemed like a man who wanted nothing more than to get to bed.

Even so, he did his best to act like a gentleman, something which he was not so used to. He walked her to her door, and waited patiently as she fiddled absently with her keys, his eyes on her but his head somewhere so far off it might as well have been

_(straight to the moon Alice)  
(he loved old television, even American television I never understood that since he was so outspoken against)  
(big fat who)_

Something tasted funny in her mouth.

_(Not quite that.)_

Something tasted _bad._

She found her key and put it into the lock. "Thank you for the ride," she said politely, but emptily.

"No problem. I'll see you tomorrow," he said in precisely the same way.

She tried not to slam the door since it would have meant slamming it in his face, but it was hard not to because as soon as she stepped through the doorway to her apartment building, a sudden, almost primal urge seemed to explode into being inside of her, a _need _to be in her room with the door locked, to be someplace _safe_, someplace where she wouldn't have to think about anything but what she would have for supper and what was on television that night.

Her exit was graceful, but only just.

He barely noticed. When she got her head put back together later that night over a bowl of oyako, she would wonder just why exactly she had gone so absent after they had left, and the best she could come up with was just what she had thought before:

_I knew that look._

_I knew it real damn well._

She tried to have another beer (actually technically her first of the day) and it didn't go over any better than it had at the restaurant. It left a bad taste in her mouth.

* * *

**Three**  
_We're all rowing a boat of fate._

* * *

It was hard for Karen not to feel a little reflective as she stepped off of the airplane and into Japan for the first time in over a year. This had been the big'un, the one that proved that they had talent _and _longevityand then they'd blown it. Or rather, _she'd _blown it 

_(and him)_

in one stupid fucking night

_(of fucking)_

and now the odds were she would never work in music again. Sure, she had a shot at a career as a soloist, but even soloists had bands, and frankly, she thought it would probably be out as soon as next week that the reason they were no more was that she couldn't keep her panties on around talented musicians. That was how they would see it. She wondered if that was how her mother would see it.

She thought about it a lot as she walked towards the big exit. She was thinking so hard that when a semi-familiar blonde head of hair wandered through her field of vision, slightly thinner and less well-filled but certainly recognizable nonetheless, she didn't think twice, and neither did the other.

She thought that the logical thing to do would be to give it a week and see if anybody started knocking on her door asking if they could see the offending panties. _As opposed to the innocent ones. _She stifled a giggle. If nobody did, she could talk to her agent and see if she had a shot at being the second Tomiko Van. She doubted it, but she might have a shot at least at opening for somebody famous for a while.

_But I don't _really _want that. It's just what seems natural to me. I'm just doing what I should be doing—singing and making as much money at it as I can. When did I stop writing my own songs so I could do just that?_

She passed familiar-blonde a second time on her way out, but again, did not notice.

_It wasn't that I was _unsatisfied. _I had a great time, and singing is great. Singing for lots of money is great too. I had a great time. _

_It's just that…_

No. It was just that. She had had a great time in ritzy hotels, enormous venues, with talented bands and not-so-talented bands alike opening for her. She had seen the whole damn world and she had met people she had never thought she would meet.

And she hadn't made a single friend at it. She knew this because not one person had called her on her cell phone to ask if she was doing okay.

It was just that.

She thought that maybe she would get a good nights sleep, wait the next day for her luggage to arrive, and then maybe head on down to one of her old bars. Tokyo hadn't changed _that _much.

* * *

**Four**

* * *

Eri wondered quietly as her cab pulled out of the turnaround if she would even recognize her old high school. She did her best not to acknowledge the fact that it would likely not recognize her. 

"Where to?" asked the driver as they pulled out of the sprawling airport campus.

She paused for a moment, sucked on her lip, and then said, "Do you know of any cheap hotels in Nerima?" She had only been to Nerima once, and the hotel had been quite expensive.

"Nope."

She said, "That's just fine. Drop me there."

If Tokyo was to be scary, let it be scary. She had already let one city beat her this year. Damned if she was going to make it two.

Tomorrow, she would buy a typewriter.

* * *

I always kind of just drop off at the end of a chapter. Usually I lose my momentum around that time. 

But as always, thanks for reading! And, this time, waiting.


End file.
